Oh no – they’re at it again.
Those uniquely Israeli creatures, the ‘settlers’, are causing trouble. This time they’ve had the chutzpah to – brace yourselves – buy homes in East Jerusalem. And everyone from the US State Department, to smug British backbenchers, to some diaspora Jews, loathes them for it. Because you see, it’s the ‘settlers’ who are the real obstacle to peace. It must be true. Everyone says so.
Well, I pity the next person who says it to me. And if it comes from the lips of a fellow Jew, then woe betide them. It’s bad enough when Islam-appeasing politicians across Europe voice this drivel. But when so-called ‘friends’ of Israel start regurgitating the lie? I see red.
Take the very term ‘settlements’. It calls to mind gangs of thuggish, Uzi-toting Israelis, who rock up, pitch their tents, and start bashing out military-type compounds like there’s no tomorrow. The term is so value-laden as to be inherently anti Israel. And shame on those among us who adopt this language. It obscures the fact that ‘settlements’ are towns, and they are villages. They are homes. And many of these homes are in areas like Judea and Samaria – where we Jews have lived for thousands of years.
But now those pesky ‘settlers’ have bought homes in Silwan, East Jerusalem. And oh, isn’t the world put out by this! Apparently it’s a radical notion: Jews, buying homes in the Jewish capital of the one Jewish nation. Barack Obama is worried – he’s warned Netanyahu of his ‘deep concern’. After all, the Palestinian Arabs are unhappy and have started hurling Molotov cocktails at their new Jewish neighbors.
For how can there be Jews in this part of Jerusalem, when the Arabs want it as the capital of ‘palestine’? Palestine must be Judenfrei. And so the narrative continues that by ignoring the ‘jew free’ policy of the Arabs, it’s the ‘settlers’ causing the problems. Obama, Russell Brand, and the rest of the world would have us believe that this racism against Jews isn’t the issue. No. It’s the refusal of ‘hardline settlers’ to bow to this racism.
And every time a Jew condemns the ‘settlements’, we are colluding with this anti semitism. Yep, that’s right. Let me say it again so there can be no room for doubt: If you are Jewish, and you condemn ‘settlements’, then you are displaying anti semitism. I mean, what else would you call it when Jews are banned from living in areas that non Jews are accepted in…?
When Jerusalem’s building committee announced 2,200 new homes for Arabs in East Jerusalem’s Arav al-Swahara, where was the world’s anger? Where was Obama’s ‘deep concern’? Where were the liberal Jews and part-time Zionists and all of their righteous indignation?
Me? I’m with the ‘settlers’. They seem to be the only ones with common sense. We just need to recall recent events to see that ‘settlements’ are not, indeed cannot, be the problem. Go on – cast your minds back to 2005. What did Israel do? She evacuated all the Jews from Gaza. In effect, Gaza was ethnically cleansed.
What happened next? Did Peace break out? I must have blinked and missed it. Did relations with the Palestinian Arabs improve….? Did Hamas remove the ‘we must seek Jews out and kill them’ part of its Charter….?
No.
The exact opposite happened. Hamas raised its game. It rained down deadly missiles on Israel and achieved the pet project of building terror tunnels. Tunnels crammed with weaponry, bomb-making equipment, motorbikes, and hypodermic syringes filled with anesthetic.
Call me quirky, but I don’t see that as an olive branch.
Yet many Jews are still swift to blame all of it on the ‘settlers’. Have we absorbed so much anti Israel rhetoric that we’ve come to accept it? Why do we agree to never take up one inch more of the Middle East than we need to survive? Why do we persist in this insane belief that giving up land will bring peace? It won’t and it can’t because the Palestinian Arabs view our having any bit of the region as an ‘occupation’. And until we get our heads around this, we will fail, and fail, and fail again.
Now I am not a religious Jew. Yet I find myself pondering the notion of ‘Greater Israel’. After all, Muslims maim, murder and mutilate their way across the globe, all in the name of their faith and their god. But Jews, getting a few more grains of the desert, because our G-d decrees it so? We’re not quite so confident in arguing this, are we?
Worse, we allow the world to tell us ‘settlements’ are ‘illegal’ and we then echo this line ourselves. Instead, we should be pointing out that there is NO consensus among experts as to the ‘illegality’ of ‘settlements’.
Stephen Schwebel, formerly President of the International Court Of Justice, notes that a nation acting in self defence may seize and YES ‘occupy’ territory when necessary, to protect itself. He also says that a state may require, as a condition of withdrawal, security measures designed to ensure its citizens are not menaced again from that territory.
Need a bit more convincing? Eugene Rostow, former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs in the Johnson Administration, says Resolution 242 gives Israel a legal right to be in the ‘west bank’: ‘Israel is entitled to administer the territories it won in 1967 until a just and lasting peace in the Middle East is achieved.’
A just and lasting peace. You want to see the real obstacle to this? You don’t have to look far.
It’s the openly genocidal aims of Hamas.
It’s the psychopathic ambitions of ISIS and every other Islamic group that wants Sharia for all – starting with the last bastion of sanity in the Middle East, Israel.
It’s the cowardice of Obama and any other Western leader who prefers to placate Muslims rather than play fair with Jews.
Settlements? They’re just an easy scapegoat. You’d think we’d recognise the phenomenon by now.
